With thanks to the tabulation of the anticipated declaration times above, this is my first draft viewing guide, for any comments or corrections anyone can be bothered to make.
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I know those of you who won't be exhausted from campaigning in, or organising, elections, or trapped in a room counting your local votes, often appreciate my "ones to watch" guide for viewing night - sometimes accurate (I'm still trading on having called Nuneaton as the "first seat that will tell us what's happening" in 2015), sometimes not - so here it is for 2024.
It feels remarkable to be typing this, but apart from exit polls being increasingly accurate, the first seat which will answer that question in 2024, shortly after midnight, is probably
Basildon and Billericay, where the Conservatives are defending a majority of 20,000, and Labour need a swing of just over 23%. Nonetheless, it's a swingy type of demographic for both Labour and Reform, the Conservative selection is mired in local resentment, and this could be an outlier election. The betting markets give Richard Holden only around a 1 in 3 chance of holding on, though they aren't sure if he loses, who he will lose to (Labour just over 50% chance, Reform the rest). Labour win here, the forecasts of a landslide are likely to be right. Reform win, they're heading for double figures of seats nationally. Conservatives win, well, then it depends how narrowly.
Broxbourne should come in at around the same time, and Labour require around the same kind of swing. Reform are less of a factor here which means the betting markets think the Conservatives will hold on - but only just, remarkably, in a seat Labour lost by over 6,000 votes in 1997. Shortly after that, we're hoping for
Swindon South (whose former MP I briefly and with varying levels of competence interned for, a quarter of a century or so ago - fun fact). This was Labour until 2010, has a prominent candidate in Heidi Alexander, and should be a nailed on gain. If Labour don't take it, then it's this year's Nuneaton and the polls were badly wrong).
Finally in the pre-1am crop, a cluster of North East seats - look out for
Sunderland Central. It should be a "don't count the Labour vote, weigh it" kind of place, but UKIP took 20% in 2015 so a good early indicator of how much support Reform are getting in Labour seats, and hot on its heels
Washington and Gateshead South - if anything more fertile ground such that the bookies will only give you 7/1. The safe-ish new seat of
Cramlington and Killingworth, which sounds like it should be in a detective novel set in Dorset, but isn't either of those things, completes the set.
1am will take us North of the border for the first indications of how well Labour are doing (or should that be how badly the SNP are doing?) as Labour find out whether they have held on to the by-election gain following the boundary tweaks of
Rutherglen. If they haven't, the red wave is a mirage in Scotland at least. In England, Labour should be starting to hit double figures no matter what, with seats like
Tynemouth, Makerfield, Wigan, and by 1:15am most of
Newcastle and all of
Barnsley, though the Barnsley seats are another place to keep an eye on the Reform vote share.
At around 1:30am, East Kilbride and Strathaven should confirm the trend in Scotland. It's 26th on the Labour list for gains from the SNP, and the betting markets think they're more likely to do it than not. A Labour gain and it's a bad night for the SNP. Putney will declare around this time, mainly of historic interest for its role in 1997. No? Ask your parents.
15 minutes later, the Lib Dems should finally chalk themselves onto the board - probably - with the result in
Harrogate and Knaresborough, home of many LGA conferences, and also the cave of Mother Shipton, famous 16th Century witch and soothsayer. I'm not saying one of those things is more interesting than the other, I'm just adding a bit of local colour for you. The LD vote here has fallen from a high of 56% in 2005 to as low as 22% in 2015. The betting markets give them an 85% chance of completing the comeback.
2am should be absolutely fascinating, with what Wikipedia calls the "safe Conservative seat" of
North West Cambridgeshire (the betting markets give Labour a better than evens chance of taking it, it's really the outer suburbs of Peterborough), the very swingy seat of
Cannock Chase (26% Labour majority 1997, 43% Conservative majority 2019, 17.5% UKIP vote 2015), and the famous
Castle Point, the only principal authority in the country to have no Councillors from the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, or Green parties, the only fight there being quite how independent you are.
Two more to note in the 2am club. Castle Point Conservative Club was the location of a scene I have been told is absolutely historical and not apocryphal, when in 1997 Bob Spink, outgoing Conservative MP, berated drinkers for not being out campaigning for him, and one replied "campaigning for you? I'm not sure any of us are voting for you". It's considered a three-way marginal (Con, Lab, Reform, in that order) this time round despite the Conservatives taking almost three quarters of the vote in 2019.
Essex North West should tell us something about what is happening tactically in seats where Labour are modelled to have the best chance of beating the Conservatives, but came third in 2019. the prediction models think it's most likely this will result in a Conservative hold, potentially with only around 33% of the vote.
Shortly after 2am, it's a good time to take stock of the overall results, as the pundits use them to refine the prediction models. Broadly about 50 results should have been declared, and if Labour are on course for the forecast landslide, they should have taken 40 or more of them (smaller urban constituencies count faster, on average). If you're seeing "Labour 30-35, Conservative 15-20, Lib Dem 1, SNP 1", that's actually good news for the Conservatives, though probably still a small Labour majority.
Between 2 and 3am, but mostly closer to 3am (barring recounts), we will learn the fate of a range of figures on the ex-Labour left, or the single issue Gaza candidates - in the
Leicester seats,
Chingford, and of course,
Rochdale and
Islington North. Again the bookies fancy Labour's chances of holding off challenges here, though narrowly in the later two cases (Chingford of course would be a gain). They have another shot later in the night with
Birmingham Ladywood and Dewsbury and Batley (some time between 4 and 5). At the other end of the spectrum, the scale of Labour's recovery or otherwise in the so-called, and ill-defined, "Red Wall" should become clear from seats such as
Bolsover, Bolton North East , and
Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes.By 3am, results should be arriving thick and fast, and the overall picture will be clear (if we are on the landslide trajectory, around 200 results should be in, and Labour should have won about 150 of them). True political geeks might want to start watching out for smaller results between now and 4am, like "What's going on in Northern Ireland" (
Belfast East will give indicators on whether the rise of the Alliance is a Cleggasm mirage or real), "Have the Greens gained any consitutencies" (say,
Waveney Valley or
Bristol Central), and "How are Plaid Cymru getting on" (
Ynys Mon was a three-way marginal in 2019. Does anyone know if it's the longest continuously existing seat in the Commons? It's been basically that seat, with basically that boundary, since at least the mid-16th Century).
Between 3:30am and 4:30am (yes I know this overlaps with the above list!) we find out a number of things, including whether
Dartford will continue its remarkable run of having voted for an MP of the same party as the overall national result at every election since it last narrowly failed to do so - in 1959, whether Nigel Farage will finally be successful in a Parliamentary candidacy, in
Clacton, and whether the most extreme predictions of the Conservatives falling to third place (the betting markets think there's a 1 in 5 chance of this - about the same odds as Slovakia beating England, which nearly happened) are likely to come true. From the perspective of the Liberal Democrats doing well (it relies of course on Labour outperforming too) eyes on
Godalming and Ash for a potential Portillo moment for Jeremy Hunt if it's possible - though I've been told that when something is expected by enough people it stops counting as a "Portillo moment" -
Witney (and thus a likely Conservative wipe-out in Oxfordshire) if it's plausible, and
Tiverton and Minehead if it's probable.
By 5am the sun will be up, results will have slowed to less than one a minute, and all but the most dedicated political obsessives, and those who are working or observing ongoing counts, should probably start to think about going to bed - if the result isn't basically clear by now, that tells you all you need to know!
